Graduate Courses
SOWK 626: Social Work with the Severely Mentally Ill
Description
This elective course offers students the opportunity to learn about leading-edge social work approaches to providing humane care for severely mentally ill clients, especially those clients with concomitant substance abuse, developmental disabilities, and severe socioeconomic disadvantage. This course offers students a comprehensive approach to social work practice with this population, which includes outreach, clinical assessment, and treatment planning. Working with the client's environment, collaboration with other systems, advocacy and program development are considered. The course uses a strengths-perspective, in that the emphasis is on understanding the severely mentally ill client's experience of illness and his/her strengths, and improving the processes associated with acquiring care.
